Of Age

Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era

Frances M. Clarke, Rebecca Jo Plant

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
22 May 2023

History; History of the Americas; American Civil War; Legal history; Local history

An innovative study of underage soldiers and their previously unrecognized impact on Civil War era America.

The smooth faces of boy soldiers stand out in Civil War photography, their spindly physiques contrasting with the uniformed adults they stood alongside.

Yet until now, scholars have largely overlooked the masses of underaged youths who served as musicians, carried wounded from the field, ran messages, took up arms, and died in both the Union and Confederate armies.

Of Age is the first comprehensive study of how Americans responded to the unauthorized enlistment of minors in this conflict and the implications that followed. Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant offer military, legal, medical, social, political, and cultural perspectives as well as demographic analysis of this important aspect of the war. They find that underage enlistees comprised roughly ten percent of the Union army and likely a similar proportion of Confederate forces-but these enlistees' importance extended beyond sheer numbers. Clarke and Plant introduce common but largely unknown wartime scenarios. Boys who absconded without consent set off protracted struggles between households and the military, as parents used various arguments to recover their sons. State judges and the US federal government battled over whether to discharge boys discovered to be under age. African American youths discovered that both Union and Confederate officers ignored their evident age when using them as conscripts or military laborers. Meanwhile, nineteenth-century Americans expressed little concern over what exposure to violence might do to young minds, readily accepting their presence in battle. In fact, underage soldiers became prevalent symbols of the US war effort, shaping popular memory for decades to come.

An original and sweeping work, Of Age convincingly demonstrates why underage enlistment is such an important lens for understanding the history of children and youth and the transformative effects of the US Civil War.

By: Frances M. Clarke, Rebecca Jo Plant
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 165mm, Width: 235mm, Spine: 35mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780197601044
ISBN 10: 0197601049
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 22 May 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acknowledgments A Note on Terminology Introduction Part I: Parental Rights and the Duty to Bear Arms: Congress, Courts, and the Military Ch. 1: Competing Obligations: Debating Underage Enlistment in the War of 1812 Ch. 2: A Great Inconvenience: Prewar Legal Disputes Over Underage Enlistees Ch. 3: Underdeveloped Bodies: Calculating the Ideal Enlistment Age Part II: The Social and Cultural Origins of Underage Enlistment Ch. 4: Instructive Violence: Impressionable Minds and the Cultivation of Courage Ch. 5: Pride of the Nation: The Iconography of Child Soldiers and Drummer Boys Ch. 6: Paths to Enlistment: Work, Politics, and School Part III: Male Youth and Military Service in the Civil War Era Ch. 7: Contrary to All Law: Debating Underage Service in the United States Ch. 8: Preserving the Seed Corn: Youth Enlistment and Demographic Anxiety in the Confederacy Ch. 9: Forced into Service: Enslaved and Unfree Youths in the Confederate and Union Armies Ch. 10: A War Fought by Boys: Reimagining Boyhood and Underage Service after the Civil War Coda: Young Veterans in Postwar America Appendix A: Counting Underage Soldiers Appendix B: Using the Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death database to Determine Age of Enlistment in the Union Army, by Christopher Roudiez Notes Bibliography Index

Frances M. Clarke is Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney. She is the author of War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North.Rebecca Jo Plant is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America.

Reviews for Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era

By taking seriously a phenomenon that other historians have too often overlooked and underestimated, this landmark volume overturns both popular and scholarly assumptions about the 'boy soldiers' who fought in the American Civil War. Elegantly crafted and expertly researched, Of Age breaks new ground in the history of household relations, the law, popular culture, state power, labor, and the boundaries of citizenship in the nineteenth century. It is a must-read. * W. Caleb McDaniel, author of Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America * Of Age is not simply a major revision of our understanding of underage boys in the Civil War, although it delivers on that promise in full; it is also a profound reinterpretation of military service and of the soldiers' experience itself, one all Civil War and military historians should rush to read. Clarke and Plant have conducted extraordinarily intensive archival work to demonstrate that roughly 10 percent of the U.S. Army enrolled underage. Even more impressively, they develop a powerful analytic framework for understanding how that service should reshape our understanding of the history of childhood and the history of the Civil War Era. A triumph. * Gregory P. Downs, author of After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War * This remarkable, groundbreaking history takes a subject of enormous contemporary interest—the thousands of youths who serve in armed conflicts as soldiers, sex slaves, human shields, spies, and suicide bombers—and reveals with vivid detail the extent to which the Union and Confederate armies relied on the young not simply as buglers, drummers, messengers, scouts, or hospital orderlies, but as combatants. This book not only recovers juvenile soldiers' wartime experience but also shows how their participation in the conflict intensified American society's age consciousness, diminished parental authority, transformed attitudes toward the young, enhanced teenagers' autonomy, and expanded the authority of the federal government. * Steven Mintz, author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood *